Say Hello to the Angels
by Lila2
Summary: It’s the choices we make that ultimately define who we truly are.


**Title:** "Say Hello to the Angels"

**Author:** Lila

**Rating:** PG

**Character/Pairing: **Elizabeth

**Spoiler:** "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Dead Man's Chest"

**Length:** one-shot

**Summary:** It's the choices we make that ultimately define who we truly are.

**Author's Note:**This is my first foray into PotC fic, although I've been writing and publishing online for the past five years. I tried to ignore the Jack/Lizzieness after the first film, because the last thing I need is another fandom to obsess about, but some things are beyond my control. Enjoy.

* * *

She's been dead more than a decade but you can still feel your mother kiss you goodnight. 

It's the gentlest touch of her lips to your forehead, the slightest brush of her fingers through your hair, the faint hint of her perfume catching on the night breeze blowing through your open window, driving away the smells and the sounds of the city outside. You hear her voice in your ear. "I love you, Lizzie," she whispers, her breath tickling your skin, catching in your curls.

You close your eyes and your ears and your mind tight, like the damned jar of earth Jack insisted on lugging from port to port, believing that if you try hard enough, try long enough, you can keep the memory from floating away, like you can make it real.

In the childhood dreamscape of your mind, your mother is still alive and smiling, the golden treasure of her hair glittering in the sunshine, her blue eyes sparkling like beams of light reflected on the open sea. Her laughter rings through the afternoon sky, like an easterly wind catching your sail, giving you life. She lifts you in her arms and spins you round and round, like the crow's nest in a storm, and you're filled with the smell of sun and sweat and salt and freedom.

In the grown up reality of your life, your mother fades from you like the Pearl in the mist, and you're left with a memory of her final days, the ghostly pallor to her skin and the thin bones poking through her skin, shadows creeping up pale flesh in the moonlight. The golden hair tarnishes, turning lank and old with the passage of time, and the light fades from her sea-eyes as the final storm approaches. The air is rank and foul, closing around you with the insufferable heat of a Caribbean night, and her breath rattles through her chest like ancient bones, drawing in and out with a painful keening, like it will never end, like she'll suffer until eternity even as she gives up the fight.

You're tired, so tired, too tired to separate fact from fiction, what's real and what you want to believe.

You know your mother died of smallpox when you were six-years-old.

You know you couldn't save her, that it wasn't your fault.

You know you weren't there in her final moments, when she slipped out of this world and into the next with a grace you no longer possess, unlike the Pearl descending towards her watery grave. But you know she didn't suffer, you know she wasn't in pain.

You know it wasn't the same for the man you condemned to die.

* * *

When you close your eyes your mother appears in your dreams. 

You freeze her in time, her presence a steadying hand in your turbulent life, guiding you to calmer waters as Jack steered the Pearl. You know it wasn't a trick of fate that led you to Will, to pirates, to freedom and adventure and a life as full of possibility as the endless expanse of sea. You know it wasn't a trick of fate that led you to Jack.

You spend your days in a restless sleep, and your nights watching the fireflies spin through the murky darkness like beacons in the night. You wonder if they keep watch, to guide lost travelers home, that one morning you'll rub your dry eyes and stretch your aching limbs, and Jack will appear in the sunrise, following the lights to you. You lock the compass away with your memories and your pain, believing if you try hard enough, if you try long enough, you can pretend it was never real.

You close your eyes once, just once, because you're tired, you're so tired, and you're back home in England and you're in your bed as your body shakes with a disease that would claim your mother's life. She's singing to you, softly, so your father won't hear, and her voice lilts over words like "pirates" and "me" and "life." You flit in and out of the darkness, between life and death, your skin glowing white against the even whiter sheets, like a living corpse laid out in the moonlight. "I love you, Mummy" you whisper and she smiles, her lips stretching wide, too wide, the skin tearing with a shrieking rip, revealing the bones below, like the Pearl splintering before your eyes at open sea. Still she smiles, revealing the skeleton beneath her skin, the still beating heart shuddering between exposed ribs.

"Will it hurt?" you whisper, watching in horror as the bones crack and shatter before your eyes, like Jack shattered when the Pearl went down.

"Always," she whispers back and you reach up to touch her hair one time, one last time, and it falls away in your hands, thick and black, the chorded feather tickling your skin.

It's no longer your mother's face staring back at you and it's Jack's name on your tongue.

You open your eyes with a start and Will is beside you, an arm slung around your shoulders, holding you up as he always does. "It will be alright," he assures you. "We'll find him, we'll bring him home."

The compass comes alive in your pocket, like the Pearl raised from the depths, and you can hear its steady rhythm as it attempts to right itself, like the beat of a heart. You don't look because you know where it points, where it will lead you, because you know it's pointing at you.

* * *

Your most vivid memory of your old life is of your mother. 

She's calmly sewing in her sitting room while you sprawl at her feet, pretending interest in your dolls as your eyes continuously explore the simple strand of black beads hanging out of her pocket.

Your mother is a Catholic and you're a Protestant, and you're only five-years-old – you don't know much of history – but you know not to ask. You know it's something bad, whatever it is that's all caught up in the inky blackness that shines bright in the right light, you know it's something she has to hide.

Today you felt stronger, braver, different, and you reach up when she's not looking and the beads slip into your hands like a heavy fall of darkness, catching between your fingers like thick locks of hair. Your mother looks up abruptly and you expect her to scold you, but she only smiles, and reaches for the rosary clasped between your hands like a lifeline.

"I think you have something that belongs to me, Lizzie," she says and you blankly place the beads in her hand, hypnotized by the vision of yourself you see staring back at you in the smooth blackness.

She tucks the beads back into her pocket, hides them away, like if she tries hard enough, tries long enough, what they represent will go away. "Do you know why I have these?" she asks and you're no longer hypnotized but you can't manage more then a nod. "When I married your father, he wanted to marry in his church, his faith." She's looking at you, but not at you, like she's looking right through you. "I loved him enough to say yes."

"I love him too," you say and she laughs and it's this moment you want to save forever.

She looks at you, hand still in her pocket, but her expression hardens with seriousness and she won't let your eyes part. "I made a choice," she says, and you can't see it but you know the jet beads are sliding between her fingers like the jewels and beads tangling in Jack's hair. "But it doesn't change who I am inside. When you make your choice, Lizzie, it had better be the right one."

You take her words and store them away. You never forget.

* * *

When Will pulls you off the broken dock and coaxes you into a bed that night, Tia Dalma kisses you goodnight with a mother's gentle touch, but she looks at you hard, like she's seeing right through you, and you know that she knows. You think she might even approve. 

Will climbs in beside you and wraps you in his arms, crossing them right beneath your rapidly beating heart. His skin is smooth and clear in the moonlight, and the long length of his black hair is caught in a neat tail at the nape of his neck. He kisses your temple softly, but not your mouth, never your mouth. You don't mind. It's been two weeks since you kissed Jack Sparrow and brought him to life as you also sentenced him to death, and you still feel the burning ache of his touch.

Will's weight rests heavily against you and for once you're holding him up, but you're not sure you can shoulder it, not sure you want to carry him. You reach into your pocket, fingers wrapping around the compass and stalling on the lifeline pointing true north, pointing towards your heart.

You make your choice.

"Yes," you say. "We'll bring him home."

* * *

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